Dust still settling from Sonoma scrapes

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — It was just a handshake between a pair of rivals on a day in which most of the drivers were mad at somebody.

By JENNA FRYERAssociated Press

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — It was just a handshake between a pair of rivals on a day in which most of the drivers were mad at somebody.But the gesture of goodwill from Kyle Busch toward Kevin Harvick certainly made news across the Sprint Cup Series garage. The two don't like each other, tangled after a race in May that earned them each a $25,000 fine, and were warned by NASCAR last month to stop messing with each other on the race track.So after all the post-race sniping last Sunday at Sonoma between drivers who had been involved in on-track incidents, it was strange to see Busch and Harvick acting buddy-buddy.“I felt like we had a really good race with each other, so, just wanted to let him know that,” Busch said Thursday. “We gave each other great room and raced each other hard and clean. And that's all there is to it.”Maybe so, but the unexpected handshake left Harvick a bit perplexed.“I mean, we raced together for a lap and a half,” Harvick said. “I was as confused about all that as everybody else.”Was it enough to patch things up between the two drivers?“I wouldn't call it good to go on that,” Harvick said.It was at least good on one day, though, and that day happened to be one in which the list of angry drivers might have been as long as the race track.Kasey Kahne was mad at Juan Pablo Montoya, and Montoya said Thursday although he was OK with Brad Keselowski, his wife was pretty angry at the Penske Racing driver. Joey Logano and Robby Gordon played another round of bumper cars, and Brian Vickers exacted revenge on Tony Stewart by intentionally wrecking him as retaliation for Stewart bumping him earlier.Whether there's any carry-over Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway remains to be seen.“Does it carry-over into the next week? It's always there,” said Sonoma winner Kurt Busch. “Drivers never forget.”That could make it interesting at Daytona, where the new style of restrictor plate racing requires drivers to have a drafting partner. Two-car tandems is the new norm at Daytona and Talladega, and drivers don't have a chance at the victory if they don't find a drafting partner they can trust.In an ideal world, drivers will only work with drivers they like. But nothing is ideal at Daytona, and it's quite possible that two feuding drivers could find themselves hooked up on the track.Especially if they are both making a push for the Chase.“It seems like each year that you go to those restrictor-plate races that you have your friends that you're going to draft with and then you have those guys that you've had some run-ins with that you don't necessarily want to draft with,” Kurt Busch said. “But what ends up happening in this two-car draft scenario is wherever you come out on pit road after a pit stop, and if you haven't teamed-up with someone, you might end up drafting with someone that might be on that list that you don't like.“You have to do the best that you can do to win. You've got to put your differences aside for the short term.”Jeff Gordon, who finished second at Sonoma, said drivers are trying to figure out who to draft with long before Saturday night's race.“I'm sure there's already been calls being made because a lot of times you have your drafting partner set up from maybe Talladega or maybe earlier in Daytona, and if you made that guy angry on Sunday at Sonoma, it's going to make that phone call a little tougher,” Gordon said earlier this week.Gordon, who had a clean race at Sonoma, said he's already set it up to work with Hendrick Motorsports teammate Mark Martin.Harvick will likely work with his Richard Childress Racing teammates. But should he find himself forced to work with Kyle Busch, at least one driver thinks Harvick will be fine.“I would consider (the handshake) genuine,” said Denny Hamlin, Busch's teammate. “Kyle is just not a ‘head games' type of guy, I don't believe. He never really does anything on-track to instigate it. I feel like he's one of the most fair racers really out there. Even though he's aggressive at times, he does a pretty good job of keeping it relatively safe for the other drivers.”But does Hamlin, who has had his own feuds with Busch, believe there is hope for Busch-Harvick reconciliation?“Every team has its own makeup and drivers have their own personalities, and a lot of times they don't mesh well together and we saw that with the 29 and the 18 this year. But in general, everyone is going to work it out in time.“Even though you consider yourself the toughest of rivals we still do a lot of things together that kind of patch that up at times.”

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